Chapter II (3)

To my astonishment, however, he answered that they were "poor misguided Catholics. That is to say," he continued, "they are what people are beginning to call nowadays, I hear, politics, which means people that are neither very much one thing nor the other. That eldest one is the well-known Paris merchant, Martin Vern, who has so much to do with the Jews and Lombards. I've a great notion he's a Protestant at heart; though his life, and all his goods, which he loves better than his life, would be in jeopardy every hour in Paris if he did not go to mass as regularly as the clock strikes the hour. It seems that young Martin, the nephew, had his father's promise to be made a soldier of; but the father died a month or so ago, which brought them all into this part of the country, and old Martin won't hear of the boy's taking to the sword. Yet I would stake my life that they are attacked before they get many miles farther, and then they will find that young Martin's stout back and strong arm are both shield and sword for them. I hope, sir, we shall have good news of you at the army; but you might as well have won a few gold pieces by the way of conducting three fat merchants safely. With what will you please to break your fast! It is not well to set out fasting, as they have done, and it's good twelve miles ere you get to Cavignac."

"I am not going to Cavignac, my good host," I replied, not choosing exactly to have my route settled for me.

"Ay, then," he answered, "you are going to Guitres, which is farther still; but in that case you'll have to pass the Saye low down, and I fear that all the rain which fell last night may have rendered the ford impassable. Besides all that, however, I heard that Lossac and his band were lying between St. Aulaye and Contras, and it is even to be doubted whether he does not keep parties scouring the whole country up as far as Barbezieux, for he wants to prevent the bands from the South from joining our great admiral and the Prince de Condé. So you had better take my advice and keep hard away to the west, though you do get among the sands, for you are not strong enough to do much against any of his people, and must e'en have recourse to what we call fox's strength, by which I mean cunning."

I thanked the aubergiste for his good information, which was, indeed, not a little important to me; for the armies of the Prince de Condé and the Duke of Montpensier were so placed that it was difficult for either to reach its resources, and no less so, for any one wishing to join the one, to avoid falling into the hands of the other.

The tidings I had received cast me into a momentary fit of musing; and the aubergiste, seeing the effect his words had produced, and, at the same time, having a strong desire that I should take my breakfast at his house, represented to me that, if I would but wait for half an hour, a courier from Angoulême would pass through Cubzac, and from him we could extract much information.

I agreed to his suggestion; and, soon after the morning meal had been prepared, I heard the arrival of the courier himself, and learned that he had passed a small band of horse, whether troops of Lossac or not he could not tell. They amounted not to more than six or seven persons, he said, and were apparently moving back towards Cercon.

These tidings having been obtained, I had nothing farther to detain me at Cubzac; and, paying the host his reckoning, I mounted to my chamber, clothed myself in my good suit of steel, and, after calling loudly, but in vain, for Andriot, to make the rest of my goods and chattels into as small packages as possible, that it might be carried more easily, I descended to the courtyard to see what had become of my young attendant and my new follower, the latter of whom I had not seen during the whole morning.

I found them together, behind some stables at the back of the auberge, chaffering with a sturdy farmer of the neighbourhood in regard to a proposed exchange of Master Moric Endem's piece of lean cattle for a fine, fresh, sturdy, but rather vicious horse belonging to the other. Moric had offered, it seems, to give his own horse, and all the remains of the crown which I had given him the day before, together with another crown that Andriot had lent him, for the more powerful and befitting charger which had been placed before his eyes. The farmer, however, stood out for another piece of money, and I was fain now to come forward and give it, though the price seemed to be somewhat exorbitant.[1] The horse that Moric already possessed was anything but fit for the journey; and, as he willingly agreed that I was to be considered the proprietor of the beast now purchased, it gave me a greater command over him than I might otherwise have obtained.

After all this was concluded and the horse in his hands, I gave a glance towards my new follower's figure, and saw that it certainly was as much improved as his form and features would admit. The buff jerkin was now cleared from its rusty stains and spots of dirt, and was shining in the full freshness of chalk and yellow ochre. It seemed scarcely dry as yet, indeed; but that circumstance he did not appear to mind; and the plain steel cap with flying cheek-pieces, into which he had thrust his head, had been painted with a sort of Indian black since the night before, so as to look very smart, without offering a very shining or conspicuous point to the eye of a watchful enemy.

No other piece of armour had yet been put on, I suppose in order to give the buff jerkin time to dry; but when, after having told him to hasten his preparations for departure, I came down once more with Andriot to mount my horse, I found Master Moric armed from head to foot, with his cuirass also painted black; thus hiding, in a great measure, the unseemly patch upon his right side.

If I contemplated him with some attention, well pleased with his neatly-trimmed beard and well-washed face, he did not seem to regard me less narrowly or with less apparent pleasure, scanning all the pieces of my arms with an experienced eye, and rubbing his hands joyfully as he saw how easily they sat upon me. The ease with which I managed my horse too, though the brute kicked and plunged most unmercifully on first being mounted, gave him no less satisfaction; and it was only upon Andriot that he bestowed some counsels and some reproof in regard to the unsoldierly manner in which he had put on his morion. When all was completed, we set out from Cubzac, and took our road onward towards Barbezieux. As we went, Moric treated me with a large portion of his conversation, amusing by its quaint drollery, but occasionally tiresome from touches of that rhodomontade whereof he had been accused. Were his own word to be believed, there was no great action which had been enacted during the last half century that he had not either absolutely performed himself or had a very considerable and important share therein. But he even went beyond that; and when he began telling a story of any one else, it very often happened that he entirely forgot, before he came to the end of his tale, the original hero with whom he set out, dropped the third person, took up the first, changed the personage spoken of to himself, and performed all the last acts he had to relate in his own person.

The most ludicrous instance of this kind of transformation took place while he was giving me an account of the tournament at which King Henry II. had been killed not many years before, and at which Moric had been present. He asserted that the fault which occasioned the death of the king was entirely on the part of Montgomery; but, before he had finished his tale, he entirely forgot that declaration, got warm and heated with the subject, was seized with the peculiar sort of cupidity which induced him so constantly to appropriate the actions of others, and becoming Montgomery himself, described how he had killed the King of France, and explained, with the utmost perspicuity and exactitude, the eager feelings with which he had been animated, and which prevented him from recollecting in time that it was necessary to throw away instantly the broken staff of his lance.

I could not help laughing at this absurdity; but he took it all in good part, laughed himself, and declared that it was every word true, except that he was the person who did it.

In many other respects, however, his conversation was full of interest. He was an old veteran soldier, and full of information upon every practical point, both of military tactics and military habits. As far as study could render me acquainted with the subject, I was so already; but I gained more useful information from my new follower in a few hours, more directions for employing well the science that I had acquired, than I could have done from the best master of the art in weeks or months.

From him, too, I learned all the habits and manners of the camp; the rules, the regulations, the etiquettes, which I had before no notion of. What could and might be done, what could not be done, he told me; and I found that, constituted as armies of that period were--low in discipline, licentious in habits--with a little complaisance to the great leaders, and the observation of a few insignificant regulations, the captain of such a party as I proposed to raise might, in fact, do anything that he liked, and act totally independent of the general during almost the whole of his campaign, provided he showed himself daring and fearless, and ready to fight whenever he was called upon.

As we were conversing in this manner while we pursued our onward way, we came to the high grounds near the little hamlet of Marceau, and, looking down over the country below, we saw a considerable number of people riding along, as if in great haste and confusion, upon the bank of the river, and at some distance to the right another party appeared upon the edge of the little slope, while the sun, glittering upon their arms, left no doubt whatever that they were troopers of some kind.

"Those are surely the poor merchants," I said, "who left Cubzac this morning."

"Ay," said the old soldier, "They are running away from those worthies on the hill; some of Lassac's people, I suppose. But the stupid fools have missed the ford. It is there, a hundred yards to the right, and they are running away from it. I know it as well as my own buff jerkin. They will get themselves caught and plundered if they don't mind."

"Let us go down and help them," I exclaimed. "If you know the ford, we can reach them before the others, and once having them across, we can turn and take a blow or two with the pursuers."

"Bravo! bravo, my captain!" cried Moric Endem. "That's the way! That's the way! It seems as if you had been born and bred to it! Always fight the enemy when he's not more than two to one! I am with you, my good captain!"

And, spurring down the hill at full speed, we approached the party of merchants, who, terrified at seeing another body of troopers on the opposite side, paused and hesitated, till, taking off my steel cap, I waved it in the air, calling to them not to be afraid.

It seems that I was instantly recognised, for they stopped, and some advanced towards me, while, pointing with my hand towards the spot which Moric had indicated as the ford, I shouted to them to ride in that way with all speed.

People in a fright, however, never understand anything that is said to them, and they did not obey my directions till I reached them, so that by the time we got them to the side of the river, and some of the horses into the water, the enemy were close upon us. It seemed to me just like one of the military games which I had been accustomed to play with the old retainers and my young cousins. With Moric Endem and Andriot, I turned my horse upon the pursuers; the lad Martin rode up in a minute to my side; one of his uncles could not resist following; and, by a sudden and unexpected charge, we drove the enemy back, who paused for a moment's consideration before they followed us again.

"Now, seigneur," cried Moric, "quick over the stream, for the river is coming down like fury, and in ten minutes more will be impassable. We can easily keep the opposite bank when we are over."

I had remarked that the water was up to the girths of the horses' saddles when the party of merchants passed, and therefore, without more ado, I gave the necessary order for crossing the stream. We found that the little river Saye, like some of the others that flow into the Isle, subject to a sudden increase, had become a complete torrent in consequence of the rain which had fallen during the night, and was swelling every moment, coming down in large brown eddies, which nearly carried our horses off their feet. The two merchants who had remained with us and Andriot passed first, and I followed, thinking that my friend Moric was close behind me; but, in charging the Catholics, one of them had been struck to the ground, slightly wounded, near the bank of the stream, and Moric's fondness for plunder could not be restrained. The man-at-arms, indeed, had run away, but the horse had somehow got his feet entangled with the bridle, and remained very soberly lying on the ground.

Turning round when I had half crossed the stream, I perceived my worthy follower busily employed upon the saddle, and shouted to him that the enemy were upon him. He looked up, however, calculated the distance nicely, finished the operation of cutting the girths with his dagger, threw the rich saddle and its caparisons on the crupper of his own horse, sprang upon his back in a moment, and plunged into the river, with the spears of the Catholics close at his horse's flanks. The water had risen some inches since I had passed; his horse was not quite so tall as mine, and for a few feet had to swim; but Moric Endem was never at all discomposed by any such little adventure; and, keeping his spurs close to the horse's sides, brought him to land, not more than a few yards below the spot where the rest were standing.

The Catholic band pursued him into the water, and one of them seemed inclined to follow his example in swimming; but Moric was by no means unprepared; and snatching from the miscellaneous crowd of arms which surrounded his saddle a long horse-pistol, which fired with a flint and wheel, he took a deliberate aim at the pursuer's horse and shot him in the water. Though the wound was mortal, the horse, luckily for its rider, dashed out of the water before it fell; and Moric, scarcely staying to mark the effect, proceeded calmly and quietly to examine the saddle which he had taken, to rip off the gold lace and velvet which covered it, and to extract from the lining of the bow some twenty gold pieces, which were there stowed away for security.

Laughing at his prize, he rode up to us, and breaking in upon the expressions of gratitude which the merchants were pouring upon me, he pointed to the tops of a thick wood of sapins which were seen it the distance of about two miles, saying,

"We had better ride on that way; for, if these fellows see us remain talking here, they will go down to the bridge and pursue us out of very spite. If we set off quick for the wood, however, they will know that it is useless, and we shall go on in quiet."

His advice was immediately followed; and, turning round on a little elevation before we reached the wood, we had the satisfaction of seeing that the enemy had given up the pursuit, and were slowly proceeding across the country in another direction.